Chapter 8
“Enjoying that?”
Dean looks up from the massive bacon cheeseburger he’s holding tightly, “If I could, I would marry it,” he mumbles around a mouthful of burger, and Coulson flinches as a piece of bacon falls from the corner of his mouth and hits the table.
“Do you always eat like…this?”
“Only when I’ve been held for questioning for over twelve hours with no breaks by some power hungry government kiss ass. So…no, not all the time.” He wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand, then sits back in his chair. “I’m not really sure what you mean to gain by this, anyway.”
“I am trying to prove that what was done was done out of necessity! If the story seems strange to me, and I’ve seen some weird stuff, can you imagine what the public feels like? How do we explain it?”
“Why don’t you explain it the same way you explain away other things? How is this any different?”
Coulson tosses a manila envelope across the table and it falls open to reveal a picture of Bucky and Y/N sliding off a rooftop. Dean shuts it quickly, “You can make that go away, you’re just choosing not to.”
“That, maybe. But this, not so much.” An agent who, until this moment was standing quietly in the corner, steps forward and hands Coulson an iPad. He taps the screen, scrolls a couple of pages, then taps again, handing the device to Dean.
Though it is silent, the black and white video is startlingly clear.
“Who the fuck has surveillance this clear in an alley?” Dean asks, his eyes glued to the images.
“Anything within a ten block radius of Avengers Tower is given priority.”
The video is of Y/N, facing off against a demon at least four times her size. Dean watches as he charges her, and, despite her trying to stand her ground, throws her into the brick wall of one of the buildings. He tries to contain his discomfort, barely narrowing his eyes as she struggles to her feet and manages to land a kick to the guy’s crotch. He falls to the ground, and she manages to jump on to his back, punching and kicking as hard as she can. He throws her off, and she hits the side of a dumpster, then lands on the ground. She doesn’t get up this time, and, just as the demon reaches her, his hand around her throat, Bucky reappears, ripping the guy away from her. He throws him out of frame and kneels down next to Y/N, smoothing her hair from her face as he checks on her. Suddenly, he stiffens, his hand wraps around something on the ground, and the demon appears out of nowhere behind him. Bucky whirls around and stabs upward, and, even in the black and white, Dean can see the flashing light of the demon dying. Coulson pauses it.
“Care to explain that?”
“I wasn’t there, what do you want me to say about it?”
“Well, it looks like Barnes just killed a man in cold blood, so I’d like your take on it.”
Dean’s hands clench, and Coulson stares at his fists, so far resting on the table. “In cold blood? That guy was going to kill my sister.”
“But a super soldier has the advantage, wouldn’t you say? No reason to go that extra step.”
“If you’re wanting me to give up Barnes after he saved my sister’s life, you can fuck right off.”
“What I want is the truth. You and your brother and sister keep telling me about the king of hell, and demons, and all manner of ridiculous things, and I need to know what it is Barnes killed. Because right now, to the world, he just killed a man that he was easily able to overpower.”
“And telling you what happened is just going to get him off the hook? The world will quit looking at him like he’s some sort of monster because Dean Winchester said it should be that way? Yea, okay.”
“To be honest, Dean, I don’t really care what the world thinks. They’ll complain about him for the next few days, maybe a week, and then it’s on to the next thing. But the government…come on, we both know what’s going to happen if you don’t tell me what I need to know. They’re going to put him in cryo, an out of control asset that should have never been set free to start with. And, it won’t matter what I think, or what you think, or what the rest of the team thinks. They will lock him away and there won’t be a damn thing we can do about it, unless we beat them to the punch. Do you understand?”
“You speak pretty poorly of the agency that pays your way.”
Coulson stands and walks around the table, then sits on the edge of it next to Dean. Dean leans away from him and clears his throat awkwardly. “Just because they employee me doesn’t mean I agree with everything they do or say.” He shifts the iPad so that Dean can see the screen again and taps the screen with his nail, “This man has lived through hell and still has managed to come through the other side and do good. He wakes up every day, knowing what he was, what he did, and he does his damnedest to make up for it. He saved your sister’s life, and I think he deserves for the truth to come out. So Dean, I’m going to ask you again, who did Barnes kill?”
Dean’s eyes shift to the screen, to the frozen image of Bucky saving his sister, someone he barely knows, then looks back to Coulson. “It’s not so much who as what. That….that was a demon.”
Coulson nods, “What happened after this?”
“We didn’t know what was going on, not until they got back…”
“They should have been back by now,” Sam paces back and forth, nervously rubbing his thumb along his bottom lip.
“It’s fine, it’s probably just taking Nadine longer to find the things on the list than we thought it would. It’s a big list.”
“Dean, they still should have been back by now.” He looks at his watch, “She should have at least texted or called. She knows how important it is to stay checked in-” he’s interrupted by the ding of the elevator and Dean gestures towards it.
“See? Nothing to worry about.”
“Uhh…I think you might be wrong about that,” Clint interjects as Bucky stumbles into the room, carrying Y/N in his arms.
Dean rushes to his side as he lays her down on the couch, “What the hell happened out there, man? I thought she’d be fine going with you!” He kneels down, taking inventory of her wounds.
Bucky swings her backpack off his shoulder and tosses it to Sam, who nearly drops it, “Demons caught wind of us, found us at Nadine’s. They headed us off when we were on the way to the roof, I had to improvise. They were coming from more than one direction, we had to split up.”
“You left her?” Sam slams the bag on the desk, “You just left her to fend for herself?”
“No, I told her to run. I only saw two of them, I told her I’d catch up and that she needed to head this way. Apparently, there was a third demon.” He wipes blood from his lip and grimaces, “Maybe a fourth.”
“Where are they now? Did they follow you here?”
He shakes his head, “No, I killed them, with your sister’s knife.” He reaches into his jacket and twirls it out of a hidden holster, “This one. I didn’t realize it was different until they…well, they kind of…” He holds it out to Dean, and he takes it.
“Lit up?” Dean looks at the knife, the bone handle comfortable in his hand.
“Yea, lit up.”
“It’s because this is a demon knife, it’s one of the only things that can kill them. She must have swiped it from my bag this morning.” He turns his attention back to Y/N, pushing the hair away from her face. “Hey…Y/N…you in there, kid?” Her eyes roll under their lids, but stay closed. “What happened to her?”
“By the time I got there, the guy had thrown her into the side of a dumpster. Looked like she’d put up a hell of a fight, but it took me longer to lose the other two than I expected. Didn’t realize you couldn’t just kill them. I took care of him, and the other two caught up. Killed them, then took off with her. There’s at least a fourth one, but I lost him in a crowd.”
“If there’s that many chasing you, I guarantee there are more you didn’t see. Sammy, she get everything?”
Sam lays out everything in Y/N’s backpack, looking over the ingredients silently before nodding, “Yep, everything’s here.” He picks up the cardboard tube and shakes it, “This isn’t on the list.”
Bucky reaches out and takes it, “Sorry, that…uh…that’s mine. It’s a poster.”
Steve raises an eyebrow, “Since when do you get posters?”
“It was interesting.” He tucks it into his jacket pocket, then crosses his arms. Steve knows the look on his face and leaves the subject alone.
“What are you guys going on about?” Y/N asks quietly, and Dean grins.
“There’s my girl. What the hell were you thinking, going off on your own like that?”
“I had it under control. Just wanted to give Buck something to do.” She looks over at him and smiles. He winks, ducking his head when Dean glares at him.
“He’s got plenty to do.” He helps her sit up, “Sam, maybe you should do the spell, and I’ll talk to Crowley.”
“No! I am fine, I’ve had worse.”
“Crowley likes me too, it’s not a big deal.”
“You know as well as I do that he likes me more. After that whole Mark of Cain bullshit-”
“Um, excuse me, what ‘Mark of Cain bullshit’?” Bruce looks up from the computer he’s staring at and Dean makes a face, waving his hand in the air.
“Nothing, it was nothing. And why would that matter?”
“I think you know why. No, I’m doing it.” She stands up gingerly, and both Dean and Bucky step towards her. She waves them both off, then carefully walks over to where Sam is organizing the spell’s ingredients.
“Everyone can stay here, but let me do the talking, okay? He’s going to want to pull all of you into this, especially you, Tony.”
“Why me?”
“Oh, you’ll see. How are we trapping him?”
“Tony and Bruce have it covered.” Sam throws the last ingredient into the bowl and gives it a stir. “You ready?”
Y/N shrugs, “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Sam nods, then picks up the knife laying next to the candle lit sigil. “Here we go.” He cuts his hand and holds it over the bowl as he recites, “Et ad congregandom, eos coram me.” He pauses, then repeats the incantation again, “Et ad congregandom, eos coram me.”
There’s a sudden flash, and Crowley is standing in the middle of the room, a glass of whiskey already in his hand. He looks around the rag tag group, surveying those he doesn’t know, and his gaze lands on Y/N. He smiles, then takes a sip from his glass.
“Hello, boys.”